Don’t Delay! Now is the Time to Start Your Web Startup.

Eden Asset LibraryBack in the summer of 2001 when I was in my final year of university, I had a part-time job at an internet cafe. It was in a dingy old pub with prehistoric computers and a barely-better-than-dialup connection shared amongst fifteen computers. Because it was such a crappy internet cafe no-one ever really went there. So I found myself with plenty of time to learn Photoshop, HTML and to dabble in PHP.

At that time the Dotcom Bubble had recently burst and though there were some ragged survivors like Amazon, the majority of the high flying, aeron buying, dotcom elite had come and gone. I used to sit in my internet cafe waiting for the nonexistent customers and think, “If only I had gotten into this web stuff five years ago, then I could have been part of all that excitement!” Read More

Motivating Yourself – Heroes, Role Models & Rivals

Eden Asset LibraryBeing a netsetting entrepreneur is very much about motivating oneself. Unlike traditional employment there is no boss-figure watching over you, making sure you’ve done your job and giving you new tasks to do. That’s an extremely liberating feeling, but it also presents its own challenges. How do you stay on track? How do you keep yourself moving when you’re feeling lazy? And when things are going well, how do you push yourself to grow, to take risks and to be better?

Motivation is a rather complex subject so in this post I’m going to talk about just one motivation tool that I use, namely other people. Heroes, role models and rivals are three types of people that keep me focused. Read More

Sometimes It’s Better Not To Know

When you have a long journey ahead, sometimes it’s best not to think too much about it. You’re much better off just getting started.

For some weeks now I’ve been working on a large upgrade to our popular freelancing site FreelanceSwitch. The upgrade includes a complete overhaul of the design, some large changes to the functionality of the site and coordinating a few different sub-projects. It’s been taking a lot of time and energy and as I write this, we’re only half way there.

This morning I was reflecting that if I’d known quite how much work was involved in the upgrade, I think I might have been a little less ambitious. And in many ways that makes me glad that I didn’t know.

A bit young, a bit naive

Three years ago when starting Envato I wrote out a business plan for our fledgling enterprise. It wasn’t a particularly solid plan, at least it didn’t have any hard numbers, or organisational charts, or many of the other things I’ve since learnt are meant to be in business plans. But it did contain our strategy for how the business would grow, and to put it mildly, it was an ambitious plan. Read More

Doing things yourself will only get you so far

Like most people I always feel like there isn’t enough time to do everything I’d like to do. The hours slip by and most things seem to take longer than I think they will. But it used to be much worse, because for a long time I used to try to do everything myself. It took me a long time to realize that doing things yourself will only get you so far. Read More